Love & Darkness & My Sidearm
by silversurf4
Summary: Crews and Reese over the body of another dead child.  The case leads to learning truths, about the bad guys, themselves and each other.  Set between S1 & S2
1. Chapter 1 Darkness Everywhere

**Love and Darkness and My Sidearm**

**Author's Note: **The title is from Moby's song "Southside" off the album Play that I was listening to as I wrote this. If I made videos, I would do one for Crews to this song, it seems to fit him…. "love and darkness and my sidearm."

**Setting:** Takes place early in Season 2 – in the space between… other cases.

* * *

**CHAPTER ONE – Darkness Everywhere**

Darkness was all he saw. There were lights and people and movement and the broken body of a small child, but all Charlie Crews saw was darkness and demons. His landscape was colored blood red with rage for innocence betrayed, belittled and abandoned. How people could visit such violence upon children eluded him. His stomach turned, he tasted copper from the blood in the air and bile from his churning insides. He was still and silent, but inside he writhed in agony and helplessness. Arrest was too good for this guy, prison too kind – there was too much time for him to work his way to forgiveness. Charlie wanted him to die with the guilt of his sin heavy on his heart – if the bastard had one.

To the outside world he looked calm, peaceful, contemplative, but under his sleek and shiny exterior lurked deep crevices full of hateful thoughts, jagged edges, sharp points and hidden scars from shivs, fists and feet and his own dance with the devil. As chaos whirled around him, Charlie Crews stood at the center; the pivot point on a deadly thrill ride of a case.

Across the room, his partner observed what no one else saw. She saw the tautness, the anxiety and dread that inhabited him. To her he appeared stretched thin almost to the breaking point. Her partner had few triggers, but the abuse of innocents or the weak was one. He became slightly unhinged at weakness exploited for sadistic pleasures. His anger raged inside burning through him like a fever. Violence against women sometimes provoked him, but particularly crimes against children, even cruelty to animals disturbed him greatly. Pain visited on the weak by the strong. It was a tiny nugget of truth about the man who was largely a blank slate to her.

He was deliberately bland and unobtrusive. He strove not to be noticed. His dress was clean, efficient, tending toward expensive but never ostentatious or flashy. His face was a mask, his features revealing nothing. But her cautious examination revealed a sea of turmoil roiling in the depths of his eyes, which rolled through the color palette from the pale blue of the sea to the sickly greenish cast of a the sky before a storm and arriving at the steely grey of storm clouds. She knew him more now through careful examination than anything he ever said. Crews said more when he was mute than his rambling speech ever did.

His eyes flicked up and caught her gaze. He stared right into her; he could sense what she was doing. She exhaled deliberately and watched the message penetrate. He rolled his neck slightly to the side and some of his tenseness eased. He silently acknowledged that she alone knew his unease. His eyes returned a thanks and her nod was unnoticed by anyone but him. He blinked twice and stepped into the work that brought them here. He came to meet her in the middle over the body of the dead child.

Her quiet canvass of responding police was futile and his observations were equally useless. They were nowhere. She crouched beside the child and he crouched beside her. She could feel the heat from his body, the anger rolling off him in waves. She reminded him to breath, asked him if he needed a moment and amusement crossed his features as he realized the student had become the master. Perhaps she was able to see past it because she'd done the job longer, perhaps because violence had not touched her as recently as it had him. She resisted the impulse to squeeze his shoulder or a likewise conciliatory but hollow gesture. No hug, comfort or consolation could undo a wrong this great.

Outside, in the car, he returned to himself. As he often did when something affected Charlie personally he deflected, "How can you stay that unaffected? I know you knew violence, perhaps even yourself as a child."

"Uh-uh," she cautioned, neatly sidestepping his line of personal inquiry. "You are so not going there, mister. Whatever is going on in that head of yours, you have to deal with, don't you dare drag me into it. This isn't about me, this is about you."

He turned sideways and asked, "When did you get to be such an authority on what's going on in my head?"

She shrugged and turned the ignition switch, sparking the unmarked to life.

He reached over and turned it off.

"Cut it out Crews. It's hot and we got places to be."

"What places?" he goaded gently. He knew she was as anxious as she to escape the gloom of the place and the metallic taste of blood in the back of her throat.

"Anywhere other than here," she owned up to her own unease. She restarted the car and he let it go. He focused beyond them, staring into the blank air beyond the windshield as if it held answers. She'd already decided to take the coast road and let the windows down for the freshness of the salt air and the energy of the sun dazzling off the waves and water, mindless of the knots it would tie her hair in. She tuned the radio to an indie rock station and deliberately blared the music, preventing further talk or introspection. _Work the case_ she told herself _not your own personal demons – or Crews'._


	2. Chapter 2  Trading Up

**CHAPTER 2 – Trading Up**

They made it back to the station in one piece without too much drama. She agreed to take the autopsy, while he researched missing persons. It wasn't that she had that much confidence in Crews' technical research abilities, but he seemed to be able to convince people (women) to do amazingly comprehensive and in depth research for him in a very short period of time. She made a point of never asking him how he motivated them to such diligent inquiries. She didn't want to know.

The autopsy revealed no signs of sexual abuse, thereby avoiding adding insult to injury, as if it was somehow kinder to simply kill a child. No one had shown this child any semblance of kindness, but somehow knowing there was no sexual component was a relief. It also meant sex crimes would not come take their case. It was a simple, standard murder (as if there was such a thing) of one of society's youngest, most vulnerable, innocent members and one least capable of self-defense.

When she joined Homicide, Reese had been mildly shocked to find that child murderers often got lighter sentences than someone who killed an adult. To snuff out that much potential was somehow deemed less egregious than killing another adult, almost as if children weren't people at all. It was a finding that puzzled her but after a time she stuffed it into the back of her mind and did not look too long into the dark after things she could not change. Crews still did.

Crews seemed to appoint himself the guardian or protector of the weak and abused, but it was a role that he only saw failure in - leaving vengeance as his only recourse. He had emerged from prison uniquely qualified for the job. He developed skills and talents giving him a hard edge, a prodigious killing ability, lightning quick reflexes and an impressive capacity for violence. His edge extended only to other adults.

Deprived of the company of children for so long, he still gravitated to their innocence and vulnerability like his life had been on pause for twelve long years. Their vulnerability mirrored his – sublimated for those long, dark years, his own naïveté shone through like a bright light. Dani had long ago lost hers, but she longed after those days when she still believed in goodness, before she lost faith in everything, in everyone and in herself.

She often had trouble reconciling the physicality and brutality of her partner with the goodness and gentleness she knew instinctively was at his core. He was like a dog someone had made mean, taught to fight and now knew nothing but blood, death and deep scars. That tendency could be overcome, but it required an investment she wasn't willing to make. She respected the immediacy of his physicality and genuine emotion behind his response, but her partner teetered on the edge of irrationality and she was his counter-balance.

It was a role she was unaccustomed to. Dani was used to being the untethered, unrestrained and volatile member of any teaming, so the expectation that she should police him and his frequently unexplainable behaviors wore on her. They walked to the elevator lost in their own individual thoughts, when his bled over into their waking reality.

"You don't like me much, do you?"

Her only response was a heavy sigh.

"It's okay. I'm not very good with people anymore. I'm not sure I ever was but I used to think I was. Maybe I never was and I just didn't know it. Now I know….so much more than back then… and yet there's still so much I don't know. You know?"

"It's not that I don't enjoy these trips down memory lane, Crews. But is there a point to this story?"

"No. Well, maybe… it's just that you seem to really dislike working with me and Davis has given you a couple of chances for a new partner…" he trailed off.

"Yeah, so."

"So why not trade up?" He arched his brows at her over the sienna lens he slid down his nose to look directly at her. "We've been doing pretty good, solving cases. You must be out of the doghouse by now."

His blue eyes were the color of pool water and deceptively innocent, but she knew. She knew what he was capable of, the things he'd done, the things he wished to do and she knew them because they were her desires too. His cool blue exterior did not hide him from her. Under the veneer of smiling Zen lurked a hard, dark man capable of extreme violence exercised with little restraint or remorse. It was what drew her to him, that dangerousness, his fierce fragility and the fact that he hid it.

"We're fine. Leave it alone, Crews."

"But why work with someone you don't like?"

"What, are we in fifth grade? How could I not like you? I don't even know you."

"I think you know me better than you let on, better than you think," he spoke her thoughts.

Their eyes connected and a look passed between them. He knew her as completely as she him. It was tough to have someone see you that fully. It was as if her solid, stable walls were wax paper thin and transparent as glass, covered only in a layer of steam. He could wave his hands, wipe it away and look beneath.

She shot him a patented Reese look, glaring at him until he swallowed hard and looked away. _Not there yet, hot shot_, her eyes told him.

In his haste he then proceeded to jam his foot squarely into his mouth, "I like you. You know?" Then recognizing the implication attempted to walk back from it awkwardly. "Not like you – like you - but I mean as a partner. And when I say as a partner I don't mean what you think I mean….what most men probably mean."

Portions of his speech were spoken a degree lower, nearly as an aside. It had taken her this long to realize these thoughts were not meant to be spoken aloud, but the dam restraining Crews' thought was broken and everything flowed downstream. Only his tone betrayed those thoughts he meant to internalize, but couldn't, "I just mean I like working with you. I like how your mind works, your tenacity, your diligence, your loyalty."

This earned him another scowl and a persistent frown, "I'm not a boy scout."

"Okay, we won't talk about you. We'll talk about me. Do you wanna know why I talk so much?" She shrugged.

"When I was in solitary, I went a little crazy, I guess. I got to a point where I could no longer tell real from imagined. It was disturbing to say the least, but I got to the point where I'd think out loud - just to have company. I know it's not really company, the sound of my own voice - but it was all I had. Now I have a hard time not doing it."

This disclosure was not something Reese was expecting. It was something she'd figured out on her own, in a way, but never expected him to admit or explain. All that time alone had to affect a person. But normally when Crews spoke it was nonsense or Zen nonsense and she just tuned him out. He was trying to say something to her, it was something important and she had no idea how to respond.

"You still talk too much," she offered. It was lame but it was what came to mind.

"I know," he admitted bashfully and looked away. "You could talk more," he offered.

"I suppose," she confessed and the fell silent again.

Reese only spoke when necessary for the job, not to fill the silence. He doubted she understood what he'd said and what that kind of alone felt like. He liked that about her, that she had economy of speech. She was real in the same way that animals were. She was honest - every move, every gesture had a meaning. Reese simply did not "do" unnecessary, superfluous. She did not, would not jabber like most women he knew. She hid - but she did not lie, not like him. Charlie wondered if everything about him was a lie – and if she knew it. "Why don't you want another partner?"

"Jesus, Crews," she sounded exasperated. He was like a dog with a bone. "Can you just be quiet for five minutes?"

Then to her great surprise he was - resoundingly and impressively silent and still for over five minutes approaching ten. It was unnerving.

"Will you stop that?"

"I thought you wanted me to be quiet," he said softly.

"I do. I did." She was annoyed at him again, but this time at his silence. She shot him a hard look and received a simple smile in response. "Stop it alright, just stop it."

"So you want me to talk?"

"No," she wavered, "yes…oh, hell. I don't want you to do anything, be anything other than what you are. Can you just do that?"

"Be myself?"

"Yes," she hissed through her teeth.

"You can not be other than what you are, but what you are, be that completely?"

"Exactly," she was somewhat emphatic about her agreement with him on this issue.

"That's Zen," he pronounced proudly.

She groaned.

She recognized it was his way of communicating that his Zen armor was back in place and he was once again in control. The power behind his anger exhilarated and frightened her. She sensed his darkness retreating but she could still smell it lingering like his expensive cologne. On some level, she realized she was attracted to that strength and the vein of harshness riding just under the surface like a shadowy animal hiding from the light.


	3. Chapter 3 Learning Truths

**CHAPTER 3 – Learning Truths**

Charlie made it home and breathed a great sigh of relief. He stood at his kitchen window with a longneck beer in hand and dragged it across his forehead. The beads of sweat from the bottle moistened his face cooling it. The darkness in his head seemed like a fire in his brain. He thought of the bloodied body of the mangled child.

Children…he'd always wanted a house full of children. Back when he and Jen were together he'd imagined chubby little blonde toddlers with blue green eyes and cherubic smiles. It was a dream he held onto even while he rotted in that cell all those years in Crescent City. Children were innocent. They were to be protected, not broken, not battered, not brutalized.

He wanted to visit pain upon someone, but they did not yet know who that person was. Anger raged inside him with no outlet. He walked to the deck, unsettled and uncertain. He drained the beer and looked around the canyon as the sun lit the sky in chestnut and orange hues. The brick wall of his house warmed by the sun welcomed his angry blows. When he stopped it was dark, blood stained and his raw bleeding knuckles ached, but the anger was gone – for now.

* * *

Dani Reese stared at the evidence. They were nowhere but she refused to voice that thought aloud. She knew what Crews' response would be, "You can't be nowhere." It would make her grit her teeth so she didn't give voice to what she knew, to where they were.

Her partner sat quietly at his desk. His hands were in his lap, but she'd seen his knuckles and ached to ask who or what he'd beaten badly enough to do that to himself. He was conspicuously quiet, oddly so. He was still mired in the darkness that consumed him at the crime scene. He needed to feel useful, to be useful. But right now they had nothing to do and nowhere to go. Naturally that meant they needed to leave, especially before the new Captain saw Crews' hands.

"Come on, Crews. Let's go," she demanded.

"Where?" he mused softly.

"Anywhere but here," she brooked no argument.

They walked in silence to the car and she watched him flinch as he flexed the muscles of both his hands. Blood oozed from the scabbed knuckles. Charlie Crews would never do something as mundane as wear a Band-aid. His face transitioned from pain to a hard mask that hid any emotion and Dani felt the warm comfort of a fireplace in winter sitting next to him in the car. _What did it say about her that when her partner was at his darkest, she felt most drawn to him?_

"You wanna tell me what happened to your hands?"

"No," was all he said.

"Okay," she drew the word out stalling for an idea. _Shit!_ She thought _I'm not the talker of the team_. The instant reaction most common to her seemed the correct one. So her old standby, anger, emerged. "Let me put this another way. Tell me what happened to your hands, Detective."

"Nothing happened," he said continuing to be aggravatingly obstinate.

"Hey, this doesn't work if you do sullen and withdrawn. That's my mood."

He smirked slightly at her mild attempt at humor. "I did this to myself," he admitted what she already knew.

Sarcasm dripped from her reply, "No kidding?"

He shot her an ugly look she'd never seen from him before.

"I know this case bothers you. What I don't know is why? You wanna tell me why?"

"No," he laughed darkly, "I really don't."

She had no response to that so they drove in silence and she reached for the radio to drown it out, when his hand on hers stopped her. His larger hand was warm as it enveloped hers, but the sight of his knuckles made her wince.

"It doesn't hurt anymore," he lied.

"Liar," she called him out but his hand stayed on hers until she withdrew it and carefully placed it on the steering wheel. She realized he was watching her reaction.

"I don't want to tell you," he started and then paused, "but I need to."

He began to talk in circles and she did not interrupt. She felt the fear edging at the corners of his speech, unspoken but there. He looped closer and closer to why this was personal for him, working his way to the point. She drove for a while aimlessly, but eventually parked the car and turned in her seat to give him her full attention.

He rambled and meandered, but the story was there and it was one she knew.

Abusive father, shy saint of a mother and their only offspring, a young recalcitrant child with a rebellious streak; it could have been her story. The lead actor in her story was a rambunctious dark haired girl instead of a lanky freckle faced red-haired boy; separated by almost ten years time but growing up in the same world. It was the story of every kid who grew up bullied at home by someone who picked on, belittled, bullied or abused a child to make themselves feel better.

As a child, she remembered wondering why people who obviously hated kids bothered to have them. Later, after the Academy, she'd learned that profound confidence problems sometimes manifested themselves in meanness and brutality.

Many cops' kids were abused, some physically, others verbally, often both.

It seemed counterintuitive in a cop, except that not all policemen were in that field because of their desire to protect the weak and abused. Some men were drawn to the supreme power and control a law enforcement officer exercises. It was a heady mix for a guy nursing a confidence problem – having a gun and a badge.

Charlie finished and stared out the windshield at the scene in front of him. "Any particular reason you brought us here?"

Dani looked up at the playground in front of her perplexed and shrugged; she hadn't given it conscious thought.

"Say something," he said in a voice that sounded an awful lot like a plea.

"You know I'm…ah, not good at talking, so…" she paused and looked sideways at him. "You're not the only one," she confessed. "My dad… you know…" she segued to what he knew intuitively.

"Hit you," he finished.

"Yep," she nodded, owning her unspoken admission. Their shared bond of battery lay between them made more real by the view through the windshield of children playing happily.

"Yet another reason to hate him," he said cryptically.

"For you or me?" she wondered aloud.

He snorted something that sounded like a failed laugh, but did not answer.

"Why'd you become a cop?" She wasn't conscious she'd spoken the question aloud.

"Is this really you and me talking?" he answered back. "Are we really having a conversation about something personal? Do I need to check and make sure you haven't been replaced by a robot?" he joked trying to close the topic having already revealed too much.

"Yep," she popped back, "and we're not done." His arched brow told her she was in dangerous territory. "You still haven't told me why you did that to yourself."

"Anger," he replied simply.

"I know that feeling," she looked into her lap.

"You hurt yourself too," he explained, "you just use someone else to do it." It was heartbreakingly honest and laid her bare.

"Okay," her ire rose to meet him, "so you know. Everyone knows. We aren't talking about me, we're talking about you."

"No, we're done talking." And with that he simply became an impenetrable fortress. His mask was back in place and even the most pointed glares simply bounced off him. _Damn him_, she thought, _I don't want to care, and he makes me and then does this._ It infuriated her. She started the car and drove with far more vigor than necessary.

"Reese," the gentleness of his tone drew her eyes, "I'm sorry. It's all I'm capable of for now. Let's just work the case?" She considered his offer and nodded her assent and with it her anger melted away like spring snow in the mountains.

"What do we know?" he began.

"Nothing," she replied bitterly.

His look was dangerous, as he held her eyes. "No what do 'we' know about people who hurt kids?" She got his meaning immediately.

"It's most likely someone they know," she professed.

"And someone they love," he finished. "Let's go see them." She nodded and steered them toward the family home.


	4. Chapter 4 Nothing is as it Seems

**CHAPTER 4 – Nothing Is What It Seems**

As they drove down the block, Dani craned her neck looking at addresses, when Crews pointed. "It's the yellow one with the gables and flowers."

"Can you see the address?"

"No, I just know." His tone was neutral and his face a mask; features schooled and frighteningly devoid of affect. "It's always the clean, neat benign looking places that hold the most sinister secrets." Then he gave her more insight without intent, "Prison looks clean and antiseptic but it isn't."

Sure enough, when they pulled even with the little yellow ranch style home from the seventies with the perfectly groomed yard and bright flower boxes under every gabled window, the address matched. "It's like Hansel and Gretel," Charlie said and bestowed his best plastic smile on her. She wanted to smack him.

There is a cardinal rule in law enforcement that holds one must be sensitive to those who have suffered a loss. The difficulty for detectives lies in knowing how to transition from empathetic compassion to inquisitive probing. It is a fine line to walk and Charlie wasn't sure he could trust himself. So for the second time that day, the affirmed non-talker of the team, Dani Reese, found herself doing most of the talking.

Dani introduced them and the wife ushered them into a neat, spare living room replete with doilies under the knick-knacks on the tables. She disappeared into the kitchen to get coffee for everyone and her husband, looking supremely in charge, reclined in an overstuffed chair with an open body posture trying to convey ease he did not feel.

Dani went through the apologetic phase and explained their interest in the boy's habits interests and activities. They discovered the boy, whose name they knew was Jacob, was eleven, studied the stars with a telescope, got good grades and played soccer. According to his father he was a "good boy" and the mother simply nodded, but remained mute.

_She and Crews could have been bookends_, Dani thought wryly.

After awhile Dani's questions became more probing eliciting varied reactions from the parents. The mother rose and tinkered, dusting and moving items with a randomness that appeared practiced. The father sat forward and attempted to stare Dani down with his beady brown eyes, under a dark furrowed brow and creased forehead that betrayed his worries.

Crews said nothing, but rather sat stock still, perched on the edge of the couch with his head cocked at an odd angle staring at the man for the better part of their 40 minute visit. Occasionally, his gaze would flick to the backyard where a large tree house was perched in the limbs of an aged oak and up the stairs behind them where a boy of about thirteen eavesdropped from the second floor landing.

He barely noted the woman and her flighty flurry of nervous anxiousness. She sniffed appropriately and seemed distraught, but there was something off about the whole interaction. It was as though both were trying hard to sell the appearance of normalcy in an abnormal situation.

"Do you have other children?" Dani cautiously ventured.

"Yes, our son David," he said proudly. "David?" his stout shout permeated the quiet little house, "could you come down here?"

The sounds of boy's footsteps on the stairs shortly followed and the guilty look he shot Charlie let both Detectives know his eavesdropping was no secret. "Yes, sir," he tentatively answered.

"These detectives want to ask you some questions. I want you to tell them the truth, David." The man's of _lord of the manor_ display made Dani want to bitch slap him.

Usually Charlie questioned children, but he continued to pointedly stare at the man with his broken hands placed on his knees clearly visible. Dani asked David a few basic questions and noted his attention was not on her, but rather hovered on his father's watchful eyes and Charlie's pointed stare. David was dismissed after a few fruitless moments and he scampered back up the stairs, quickly disappearing altogether this time.

Crews' pointed staring finally unnerved the man to where he asked Crews directly, "Is there something you want to say to me?" Charlie's head inclined to the side indicating dedicated inquisitiveness, but he steadfastly refused to speak.

"Is there something wrong with him?" The man's ire was palpable as he directed the question at Dani.

"Yes, he hit his head," Dani excused her partner's curious behavior. "Come on Crews. Let's go." But Crews did not move. She reached down and grabbed him by the hand and hauled the tall, pale man up off the couch. The spring in him as he rose bespoke his energy that Dani knew was a lustful desire to physically question the father. Everyone in the room felt it.

The wife gave a gracious good bye and thanked them. And it was at this point that Charlie broke his eerie silence with a foreboding comment, "Oh, we'll be back," he promised while again directing all his attention at the father who stiffened and paled.

"Are you? Is he threatening me?" The father stumbled over the words.

Dani was now beyond embarrassed as she dragged Crews down the walk pissed beyond words, but words came nonetheless. "Just what the hell was that? Are you insane? You can't do that Crews."

"I didn't 'do' anything," his tone was ominous and yet compelling.

They climbed into the car and her anger manifested itself in slamming and grousing. "Look, I feel it too. He's not a nice man. He probably beat the boy, abused him. But we have not one shred of evidence and they look like the fucking Walton's for Christ's sakes."

"How things look is not always how things are," he quoted.

"Okay, Kung Fu, but in police work we have this pesky little thing called evidence," she tersely reminded him.

"That's why I'm going to get us some," he smiled a scary grin reminding her of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

"How?" she asked incredulously. "We have nothing. We are nowhere. We can't magic a warrant out of thin air. And you are certifiably nuts."

"Pull around the corner," he directed, "then park the car and wait for me."

He climbed from their unmarked and calmly walked into the side yard of an adjoining house. He hopped two fences, patting a golden retriever on its fluffy head before scaling the fence of the family's yard and in three quick movements hoisted himself into the tree house in the back yard.

Dani swore to herself and slumped behind the wheel in her shades and pounded on the steering wheel for good measure. _Crazy fucker was gonna get them both fired, arrested or shot. _


	5. Chapter 5  Treehouses & Boys

**CHAPTER FIVE – Tree Houses & Boys**

She sat in the car for the better part of ninety minutes, during which time a marked unit rolled by suspicious. She flashed a scowl and her shield at them out the window waving them off. They increased their speed and disappeared from sight. She called his cell once. He'd answered on the first ring, said "not now" and hung up abruptly, ratcheting her infuriation with him up to previously unknown levels.

She wished she smoked so she'd have something to do, but abhorred the habit, which was just as fruitless as the nail biting she now found herself engaged in. Just as she was about to call him again, Crews slipped down the tree trunk and the older son, David emerged behind him.

"Sonofabitch," she swore, morphing instantly from anger to grudging respect as the pair made their way over the fences toward her. She wondered how she'd missed the boy's arrival or if he'd gone directly there before they left the house. But Crews had not missed it. He amazed her sometimes, but in an annoying, irritating, infuriating way. She knew she was duly impressed at times, but was confident there was nothing she liked about her amazement in her partner.

He wore a sincere smile as he leaned into the car, "Hi Reese. You remember David?"

She nodded, waved and motioned for him to climb in. The boy and Crews seemed mirror images engaged in a step forward in time with the same lanky tautness; pretend smile and athleticism in both their bodies. Lurking somewhere in the background of both the boy and the man were winsome smiles, a smattering of good looks and a disarmingly boyish charm. She nearly blushed considering their sameness and a host of qualities and characteristics she'd never noticed in Crews before.

"Something wrong?" he asked sensing her discomfort.

"No," she shook him off and concentrated on the boy in the backseat.

Turning in her seat she engaged him directly. "David, are you okay?" The boy shook his head in the negative and cast his eyes downward at his shoes and the floorboards. "Did your father hurt you?" she inquired cautiously not wanting to go over ground Crews had already covered.

"He's not my father." The boy sounded forlorn. "He wasn't Jacob's father either."

"Do you know what happened to Jacob?"

Crews nodded but let David answer.

"Jacob wasn't like me. He wouldn't take it. He fought him – about everything – all the time. He was determined to make Jake mind and he used this to do it." At that comment, David produced a thick leather belt with a large buckle wrapped around itself. "I took it. I hid it. He thought Jake did and he was so mad at him. They left and when he came back Jake wasn't there. But I didn't say anything. I didn't do anything. I was so scared. I'm such a coward." He cried bitterly, "My little baby brother was braver than me. I should have protected him, but I did nothing. I suck."

Dani was glad to have the seat between her and the crying boy because had it not been there she would have gathered him against her and held him close like someone should have but no one did.

His tear filled eyes held hers as he sat forward and reached for her arm. "Will you help me get him?" David pled. His small palm, calloused from days on monkey bars, lay against her forearm. She stared at it but did not trust her voice to answer, when Crews placed his damaged hand over David's and spoke for her – for them both.

"Yes, we will."

At that moment, she saw the hero behind the anger, behind the Zen and Charlie Crews became something else to her. He was the defender of the weak and abused. He was the grown up obstinate little boy – the Jacob who lived to champion others' causes. She saw a glimpse of what it was Ted admired about him and it was more than a bit unsettling. They were going to get into so much trouble together - she just knew it. She could feel it coming and yet was powerless to stop it.


	6. Chapter 6  Missing Person?

**CHAPTER SIX – Missing Person(?)**

Reese drove them all back to the station, but they stopped en-route to pick up burgers and soft drinks. As they rode the elevator to the floor holding the Homicide bay and interview rooms, David sucked on the straw of his soda and thoughtfully wondered. "Will they put him in jail?"

Charlie shrugged and said, "Hope so."

Again Dani was struck by her partner's boyishness and how childlike he could be. It wasn't that he acted foolish, although he did that sometimes too, but more that he possessed a buried innocence that children pulled out of him. She pondered what that meant about the tall thin man making infuriating noise with his straw by pulling it in and out of the lid.

David grinned at Charlie and her partner winked at the boy in response as they snuck through the squad bay and quietly placed the boy in Interview Two.

"You know we can't talk to a minor without the consent of his parents," Dani chastised.

"Now how are we going to get the permission of the parents, one of whom killed Jake and the other who's covering for her husband?" Charlie's conspiratorial whisper made Dani shake her head.

"We're gonna get in trouble…again," she warned.

"Yeah, but can you think of better reason?" he conspired. "Reese?"

"Okay," she acquiesced. "I'm taking this down to evidence. Get it all on tape and we'll take it to the DA for a warrant," adding wryly under her breath, "While I still have a badge."

"You'll sleep better knowing you did the right thing by this kid than by some dumb law," Crews told her. She nodded knowing he was right.

But right morally and right legally were not always the same thing. The system was set up to protect the guilty, to protect murderers, rapists and pedophiles and yet it had still failed Charlie Crews. It was no wonder he didn't feel like he had to abide by it strictly.

Charlie disappeared into Interview Two with David and a bag of fries, while the belt David provided went into a clean evidence bag. Dani busied herself with rushing the belt through forensics, ignoring the procedural gaff in search of a greater right. If they could try to match it to injuries on Jacob's body it would be enough, coupled with David's statement, to get them into the house and the family car.

Over the next few hours, while Crews patiently and painstakingly obtained the history of abuse in David and Jacob's past, Dani paced and scowled. She hated listening to the abuse both boys suffered, perhaps because it was so close to home for her, and for her partner.

After a time, she stopped watching and listening so closely to David and began to observe her partner who despite their work together was largely a blank slate to her. She noticed how relaxed he appeared, but it was something he worked at – looking relaxed. There was a difference between looking relaxed and being relaxed and Crews was pretending. It was subtle, but it was there and it was the first time she'd paid attention to that, to him in that way. It made her wonder what else he pretended about.

Crews reached a logical stopping point and asked David if he's like to use the bathroom. The boy eagerly said yes and they both stood mutely outside the men's room while David washed his face clean of tears.

"Hey – you two," the new Captain barked. "Yeah you. Crews and Reese, right? Stop what you're doing. We got a missing kid."

Reese thought she was seeing things because she was pretty certain her tall red haired partner just rolled his eyes.

"I know we're homicide, but this kid is the brother of your homicide vic."

They exchanged a knowing look and steeled themselves for the new Captain's reaction to their departure from established procedure. Dani usually led their briefings as the senior Detective, but this time Crews simply blurted out the obvious.

"Oh, he's not missing. We have him." Crews smiled brightly.

"He's in there," her partner confessed thumbing in the direction of the washroom.

"And his parents would thinking he's missing because…" Tidwell questioned.

"We didn't exactly get their permission to interview him," Dani admitted and stepped to the front of the pack. Her team, her responsibility, she reasoned.

"Detective Reese wanted to, but I'm not a stickler for the rules. Maybe you've heard?" Crews ventured.

The Captain swiveled his head from the tall man wearing the smile to the petite woman wearing the frown, before offering, "Kevin Tidwell, I don't think we've met, but I can tell we're going to be spending a lot of quality time together."

He shook each Detective's hand and then bought into their conspiracy completely by asking the obvious, "So you like the parents for this?" It surprised Dani and Charlie both, but Crews nodded and explained.

"And you think this weak assed ploy is going to get you a warrant?"

"That and the belt the kid handed over," Crews was confident and cocky.

It was actually comical to watch men try to decide which one was the alpha male of the pairing. Dani knew Crews' history and would have put a sizeable bet on him regardless of the new Captain's rank and official authority

"And when your evidence gets tossed as fruit of the poisonous tree from your illegal questioning of the kid?"

Crews defended ably, "Then we save a life. No one's bringing Jake back but we get David out of there."

"Sound logic, but you aren't going to make any friends at the DA's office like that," Tidwell commented dryly.

"Oh, he's already got a friend at the DA's office," Dani said, leveling a none too subtle dig about Constance Griffiths at her handsome partner.

Charlie did a double take at her as if to say, _"just whose side are you on?"_ but offered no verbal response.


	7. Chapter 7 Partners & Sidearms

**CHAPTER SEVEN – Partners, Knockouts & Sidearms**

In the end, they got the warrant and David had the satisfaction of seeing his brother's killer led away in handcuffs. Charlie still had harsh feelings for the mother and despite his plastic smile, Dani saw the enmity in his eyes for the woman. Then she saw compassion like he'd flipped a switch and it made her wonder if that was real or affect.

Charlie got a lecture from Constance about the admissibility of David's testimony and Dani a scolding from the new Captain about keeping her junior partner on a shorter leash to which she wanted to tell Tidwell "Yeah, right", but didn't.

As the pair of detectives had a celebratory coffee over the hood of their car, they decided they'd both sleep better knowing David was out of his stepfather's grasp. It was a win, not a pretty one but it felt good, it felt right. It was decided they would check in on David later that week, to see how things were at home. Despite this being a social worker's job, neither of them trusted the boy's welfare to a system that often lost children entirely.

It was this agreement that led to the curious end to their case and put Dani in the oddest position she could ever recall with any partner, even a partner as strange as Charlie Crews. Dani Reese could never have envisioned a version of reality in which she'd be sitting under a tree in a shady back yard with Charlie Crews' head resting in her lap. He was out cold, having fallen from the tree house.

There was a small trickle of blood from his scalp where he'd hit the tree limb after the stair nailed to the tree gave way, otherwise he appeared asleep. David had gone to phone for help as Dani's phone was charging in the car and Charlie's was buried in his pants pocket, a place Dani Reese refused to put her hands.

_Grown man climbing trees like a little boy, serves him right - stupid goof__ball_ she thought. He hadn't broken his neck, she'd watched him fall. He just clipped the tree limb and knocked himself out as she watched him slump into the deep green grass and David poked his head out of the tree house window.

"Don't panic," she told the boy, "he's fine, but why don't you go inside and call 911 just for practice. But tell them it's not an life or death emergency." She wasn't sure David understood this distinction because the boy ran like he was being chased.

She shook her partner and when that produced no reaction she'd pulled him into her lap as she leaned against the tree. "Come on Crews. Wake up," she demanded insistently, but he was out cold.

The time gave her the freedom to examine him closely. His freckles rose and increased in frequency as they disappeared into his hairline and the short hair she found there was curly, but remarkable soft. With his features relaxed he appeared much younger, and boyish again sprung into her mind as a descriptor. His features were symmetrical, which she knew was elemental to someone considered classically handsome.

Unbidden her hand stroked his face and her voice called to him lightly, summoning him back to the waking world. She used his given name, not like she normally did. "Charlie," she spoke softly, "wake up." His blonde lashed eyes fluttered trying to wake and she continued to talk to him. Then his blue eyes opened and he looked up at her smiling.

An impression of what it might be like to wake to that face, those eyes and that smile every morning flashed quickly in her brain, before she pushed the image far from her mind. He twisted to look directly at her and it was then she realized her hand was still on his face because he covered it with one of his.

"Um…are you alright?" she managed.

"Yes, I am. Were you worried?" he teased.

"Worried about the paperwork. Insurance forms. Having to visit you in the hospital," she said rolling her eyes. "Shoulda known you can't break a head as hard as yours," she chastised.

He pressed into a sitting position, but she was still pinned beneath him and for a moment a devilish look crossed his eyes. She thought he was going to kiss her, she may have even hoped he would, but he didn't. He leaned close for a moment then thought better of it and retreated looking away, beyond her, into the past or the future she was never sure which.

He twisted his head from side to side testing his range of motion and then got to his feet and held a hand out to help her up. She took his hand and when she stood his near foot height advantage made her have to look up at him haloed by the sun.

"See Reese, some days being hard headed has its benefits," he smiled cheerily. "Still, I should fix this before David gets hurt," he thought aloud, examining the loose board with a skeptical look.

He'd moved on, she remained there in the moment, in the lush grass with him lying in her lap. Dani knew she needed to find a distraction before she did something stupid involving her partner. She needed to find someone else to indulge in that kept her thoughts far from Charlie Crews and not tempt him like she obviously just had. They were dangerous for each other.

"Wonder if they have any tools in the garage..." he began as the wail of a siren got closer. " You didn't call a…"

"Don't look at me. David was worried," she lied.

He looked toward the house where a worried young boy emerged and grinned broadly when he saw Charlie upright and moving. "I'll tell them you're okay, Charlie," he promised and disappeared inside again.

"Crews," Dani beckoned, handing him his pistol. "You'll need this," she told him.

"Yeah, well I wouldn't want to be without either of them," he remarked as he took the sidearm from her.

"Either of what?" she frowned.

"My partner or my pistol. Wouldn't get very far without either," he smiled a small true smile at her. She looked down and shook her head ruefully.

"Come on, it's Tuesday. After I fix this step, let's get tacos for lunch," he offered.

"Crews, it's 10AM," she complained.

"Don't they have breakfast tacos there?" he asked and he heard her groan.

They were going to be okay. They were getting better together. They were more alike than either of them wanted to believe or admit. He was stubborn too. She was damaged like him. They dealt differently, but there was a common theme running through their lives. They both needed someone worthy of their trust and she dared to think perhaps in this most unlikely pairing they'd accidentally found it.

_**Author's Note**__: Special thanks to my beta (Jo Taylor) who makes the gibberish that comes out of my brain readable. You'd thank her too if you had to suffer through my rough drafts _

_And all those folks who take time to review and comment, "Thanks – you're the best."_


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